Amazon.com description: Product Description: This innovative book, newly available in paper, examines the global significance of religion, and the different and complex ways in which the role of religion has changed - and is changing - in different societies. Has a process of separating religion from politics been reversed by recent developments? To what extent do the central values and concepts of traditional religion remain embedded in a society in which substantial numbers no longer formally follow the faith? How has the balance of religious influence between mainline denominations and `cults′ changed, and what is the significance of such change?